There is an ongoing need to improve flow of traffic, to reduce congestion, reduce consumption of fuel, and reduce incidence of traffic accidents and related tie-ups. Numerous efforts are being made to provide vehicle operators with route guidance. Some exemplary systems include a route guidance system for vehicles including central computing and transmitting apparatus by way of which the central computing apparatus is informed of the positions of respective vehicles on a road network and the vehicles are supplied with route guidance data calculated by the central computing apparatus regarding the best routes for the respective vehicles to take to respective desired destinations. The transmitting apparatus carried by the respective vehicles informs the central computing apparatus of the desired destinations. The computing apparatus informs the central computing apparatus as to traffic congestion on the network, and includes speech synthesizers used by the vehicles and to speak instructions to the vehicle operators as to the routes to be taken to desired destinations. Another system comprises a radio linked vehicle communication system for text messaging, traffic light control, resource management and traffic monitoring. It is designed to establish the location of emergency vehicles and related privately owned vehicles within their vicinity and have this information relayed to a third party using conventional electronic devices. The purpose of this system is to notify the privately owned vehicle or vehicles in close proximity of an emergency vehicle of their presence, so as to avoid possible accidents and to relay this information to a third party to be recorded and verified.
Another system provides for modeling and processing vehicular traffic data and information. This includes transforming a spatial representation of a road network into a network of spatially interdependent and interrelated oriented road sections, for forming an oriented road section network. A variety of vehicular traffic data and information associated with the oriented road section network is acquired from a variety of sources.
Another system describes collecting traffic information using one or more aircraft, such as helicopters, flying predetermined flight paths above a geographic area. The flight paths are determined so that portions of roads for which traffic information is to be collected are within the ranges of remote velocity sensors located on board the aircraft during the flights of these aircraft along their respective flight paths. Each aircraft includes positioning equipment that allows the precise position (i.e., altitude, latitude, and longitude) and attitude (i.e., roll, pitch, and yaw) of the aircraft during its flight to be determined. During a flight along the predetermined flight path, the remote velocity sensor in each aircraft is operated to perform scans of locations on roadways in the geographic area. Using a precise road map database and taking into account the location, velocity and attitude of the aircraft while each scan is being made, data indicating traffic conditions along the roadways are collected.
There remains a need to provide an on-vehicle system capable of monitoring and analyzing localized traffic information which provides this information to a central computing apparatus to provide route guidance data to vehicle operators in the localized area, to assist in planning traffic routing and management.